Rated: MA15+
Directed and Written by: Keith Thomas
Produced by: J. D. Lifshitz & Raphael Margules of BoulderLight Pictures and Adam Margules
Cinematographer: Zach Kuperstein
Score: Micael Yezerski
Starring: Dave Davis, Menashe Lustig, Malky Goldman, Lynn Cohen, Fred Melamed, Ronald Cohen, Nati Rabinowitz, Moshe Lobel, Efraim Miller, Lea Kalisch and Ethan Stone.
The Vigil has the style of a classic horror, of creaking floorboards and shadows hiding in the dark combined with a different style of story: a Jewish shomer or watchman of the dead, haunted by a monster awakened in a forest during the Holocaust.
Recently moving to ‘Boro’ Park, Brooklyn (a Hasidic community), Yakov (Dave Davis) is adapting to his new life in America. Having just lost his faith and struggling – having to choose between buying medication or food – the leader of a support group for Jews adapting to their new life says, ‘What matters is that we’re moving forward.’
And underneath all the shadows and monsters, moving forward is the driving theme of the film.
When Yakov is offered the job of shomer, he weighs up his hesitation to return to a life he wants to leave behind versus the offer of money he desperately needs to pay his bills.
All he has to do is sit for five hours and wait for morning.
It only takes fifteen minutes for him to believe he’s losing his mind.
Set over one night, most of The Vigil is set in the house of recently deceased Rubin Lutvak and his wife. A known recluse, Mr Lutvak was the only surviving member of his family after the Second World War.
It’s all dark and creepy and goes down that path of history and memory so there’s a complete story behind the monster haunting, damned to look back at the past.
Writer and director Keith Thomas has a background as a novelist (The Clarity (2018) and Dahlia Black (2019)) as well as a screenwriter, and he’s taken time to round out the backstory so The Vigil becomes a horror movie, with a difference.
There’s a feeling that this is a unique storyline because the supernatural of the horror is based on Jewish culture and mysticism. Where four hundred dollars for five hours of time becomes the price of the shomer’s soul, as he becomes haunted by a monster that feeds on the memories of the broken.
And there’s some scares here, I yelped at one point, after being left on the edge with moments where Yakov thinks he can see something, there in the shadows, so I look, not knowing if the mind is playing tricks or if there’s actually something there.
Dave Davis as Yakov is well-cast, believable in his nonchalance and questioning of his sanity.
And the thumping and scratching, the sharp intake of breath and winding soundtrack adds that extra tension, even more during the silence, the pause, the waiting.
The only drawback for me was the portrayal of the monster, those claws not quite convincing. Not quite as scary as those shadows used to build the suspense.
But overall, The Vigil is worth a watch.
